Chapter 14
14
Rose was a little surprised that Tom was gone when she woke up the next morning. Not disappointed, no, because that would have been a ridiculous way to feel after she’d made him sleep on the love seats.
Even if she’d kissed him too.
She took the last cup of coffee out of the pot he’d left on the burner, nudged his dirty clothes into a pile by his suitcase, and checked her phone for messages. Before the pool incident the day before, she’d sent pictures of the wallpaper samples to the family group chat, but all she had in response were two pity thumbs-ups from her mother and Max, and the conversation had moved on to the Pats game that afternoon. She supposed the birds were in without objection, but that was almost disappointing too.
She nearly missed the note Tom had left in the fridge with a peeled orange on a plate.
Off to do construction things & look good doing it. Don’t worry about anything. Take it easy today. Tom
There were work vans parked across the street at the inn. Rose caught a tiny flutter of hope warming her heart from the note and the evidence of repairs to come and paused to savor the feeling. Maybe she could do this. Maybe they could do this. She’d never thought life with Tom was going to be free from the occasional disaster. She’d thought it was going to be an adventure. She’d thought they were going to be in it together.
Rose had to pick her way through piles of melting snow and ice to get across the road to the inn, and thus she nearly stumbled into two young women stationed at the end of the driveway. The girls—teenagers, or maybe twenty-year-olds—gave her twin looks of appraisal from her red snow boots up past her black parka and the French braid she’d corralled her hair into. They then dismissed her, turning back to the inn with their phones in hand. They were waiting for something.
“Can I help you?” Rose asked politely.
“We’re allowed to be here. This is a public easement,” said the first, a mousy blonde with her long hair flat-ironed within an inch of its life. Her confident statement had not necessarily addressed Rose’s question.
“It’s…a driveway,” Rose corrected them.
“Tom Wilczewski made us leave the property,” explained the second lurker, a South Asian girl with a faint British accent. She nervously shifted her transparent plastic retainer over her top teeth as she spoke. “But he can’t make us get off the pavement.”
Rose looked at them in confusion.
“Why are you here though?” she asked.
“Boyd Kellagher,” said the blonde at the same time the dark-haired girl said, “Don’t tell her if she doesn’t know, Snowy.”
Oh. A couple of Boyd’s fans. Rose eyed them with new interest. They didn’t look like her idea of Internet weirdos, though she didn’t know what she’d expected them to look like. And she didn’t know why Tom wouldn’t let them on the property. As long as they weren’t trying to, like, nonconsensually drain Boyd’s bodily fluids, she would have been inclined to let them in to meet him, assuming Boyd was still there.
After dripping all over the man’s expensive shoes the previous day, Rose could see the advantage of bringing some distraction with her if they were reintroduced today.
“Who are you two exactly?” Rose asked.
After silent communion with each other, the blonde introduced herself as Snow Wolf. The brunette, without a trace of hesitation, proclaimed herself the Great Puffin.
“Your parents really wrote that on your birth certificates?” Rose asked skeptically, because the girls were well dressed and glossy in an upper-middle-class way, and they were probably called things like Amy and Sita.
“You can’t use your real name in fandom,” the Great Puffin scornfully informed Rose, although she was not in fandom but, rather, on Rose’s driveway.
“Yeah. I run the Tomboy Updates accounts. That’s, like, thirty thousand people following me. I can’t use my real name, obviously,” said Snow Wolf.
“You didn’t stalk Boyd here from New York or anything?” Rose clarified with some rising alarm.
“We’re in school in Boston, but Snowy’s from here,” said the Great Puffin. “After we saw the pictures from yesterday, someone in our Discord used Google Earth to ID this nasty hotel. So Snowy and I came over to figure out what’s going on.”
“It’s not nasty,” Rose immediately told them. “The pool just hadn’t been cleaned in a few months. It’s fine inside, where Boyd’s staying.”
Snow Wolf scoffed. “He isn’t staying in this shithole, obviously. We’re trying to figure out if Tom or Boyd are doing some test shots for the Greta Gerwig zombie project that’s supposed to start this fall.”
Rose narrowed her eyes, mentally uninviting them from the inn if they couldn’t say anything nice about it. They could practice for a career in the Pinkertons somewhere else.
“Oh my God,” said the Great Puffin. “Wait. Are you the lady Boyd saved from drowning yesterday?”
Both girls gasped dramatically and scrolled through their phones to compare Rose with whatever horrible photos Boyd’s camera crew had now put online forever.
“Boyd did not save me,” Rose said, crossing her arms and glaring.
“How do you know him?” Snow Wolf demanded.
“She’s probably just the pool cleaner,” the Great Puffin said.
“I own this place,” Rose told them. “And you should probably leave.”
They scoffed.
“Nuh-uh,” said Snow Wolf. “I did my research. This inn is owned by Maxine Kelly Steagall, and the online property tax records say she’s claiming a senior citizen exemption. You’re not, like, that old.”
“If you’re this good at research, shouldn’t you two be, I don’t know, violating someone’s civil liberties for profit instead of stalking a movie star?” Rose demanded. “Pictures of him can’t be worth that much. I am in charge of this place, and I’m not letting any paparazzi in.”
“We’re not paparazzi. This is just our hobby,” Snow Wolf said, taken aback.
“We’re just Tomboy fans,” said the Great Puffin, big brown eyes going earnest and impassioned. “Do you work here? Could you let us in?”
“I wrote a 150k hockey AU longfic about Tom and Boyd. We just want to give it to them,” said Snow Wolf.
“I did the art and the binding,” said the Great Puffin, blinking at Rose beseechingly.
Rose softened at this. Tom didn’t seem to think much of Boyd’s fans, but Rose had written a very embarrassing letter to Orlando Bloom as a tween and not sent it only because she didn’t have the spy skills of these two and hadn’t known his address. And the way the Great Puffin was clutching a large binder to her chest did remind Rose a little bit of her younger self.
“Maybe I could give your…longfic?…to him. And see if he wants to come take some selfies later,” she offered.
“Tell us who you actually are first,” the Great Puffin demanded.
Rose wrinkled her nose at the suspicion and lack of gratitude.
“So I’m…well, I don’t know Boyd. Yet.”
“Ugh!” The girls threw up their hands, disgusted at Rose as a waste of their time.
“Wait,” Rose protested. “I do know Tom. I’m his ex-wife.”
But this only made them roll their eyes in disbelief. “Like you could pull Tom Wilczewski,” said the Great Puffin, unaware that Tom had at one point promised to have several babies with Rose. “And anyway, he’s out here with Boyd. His true love.”
Rose gave her a flat stare. Even allowing that the two fangirls were not going to be receptive to any information suggesting that Tom and Boyd were not themselves headed for domestic bliss, this wasn’t flattering to Rose.
“You got me. I’m actually here for Boyd too. He pays me to hit him with a sweep broom and tell him he’ll never be as buff as Adam Driver,” she told them disdainfully. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”
That sent the girls into fresh fits of eye-rolling and demeaning glares.
“Funny,” said the Great Puffin with maximum scorn. “You should be on Wattpad.”
Rose sneered back and jerked the binder out of the girl’s arms.
“I’ll give this to Tom. Who I have, multiple times, pulled . Maybe he’ll pass it to Boyd,” she said as she swept away with all the dignity she could muster after an encounter with the youths.
It wasn’t a good enough parting line. The girls were still glaring at her.
“And you’re wearing mom jeans,” Rose informed them. That was better.
She let herself inside the unlocked front entrance of the inn and saw more evidence of repairs. Butcher paper laid out on the floor, heavy footsteps echoing from upstairs. The lights were on, the windows were open, and she smelled nothing worse than dust. Encouraged, she set the binder down on the big round table at the entryway and took a couple of steps up the stairs.
“Tom?” she called.
After only a second or two, she heard jogging footsteps, and he popped his head over the top landing.
“Oh hey!” he said, looking tight-lipped and harassed. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Much better. Is everything okay over here?” Rose asked.
“Um, everything is fine. I’m glad you’re feeling better. The tape and bed guys aren’t going to leave after all.”
Rose frowned at this non sequitur. “Why would the tape and bed guys leave?”
“Well, they were worried about the bees.”
“What’s going on with the bees?” Rose asked, taking an instinctive step down the stairs.
“The bees are also fine,” Tom said vaguely, casting a nervous glance back over his shoulder. “The bee removal lady definitely knows what she’s doing.”
His tone suggested less than one hundred percent confidence in every previous statement.
“Where’s Boyd?” Rose asked.
“Out back somewhere,” Tom said, nose wrinkling. “I’m not sure. He might go home today. Don’t worry about it—I have everything under control.”
“Literally everything you just said makes me worry,” Rose informed him, mind already sketching out unfortunate scenarios involving drywall, bees, and People ’s third-sexiest man alive for the year 2022. “Do you want me to look over any of the estimates you got?”
“You don’t think I can hire a repair guy on my own?” Tom demanded.
“I could at least help you come up with a schedule? You know. Who’ll be here when.”
Tom’s shoulders hunched. “You’re assuming I don’t have a schedule.”
“Do you? Can I see it?”
“It’s a mental one.”
“Uh-huh,” Rose said.
“I do have one! Today it’s something like…” Tom hesitated, transparently coming up with a schedule on the fly. He straightened and found his mark. “Ah, bees, roofers, drywall, lunch , painters, wash the sheets, take down the curtains, bleach the kitchen, and then it’ll be time for the season premiere of Drag Race and dinner. There.”
“Is that all?” His schedule sounded ambitious, to put it lightly. She didn’t want to make any more negative assumptions about him after being spectacularly wrong several times so far, but she also didn’t want him to feel like she expected him to do everything himself.
Tom peered at her thoughtfully, crossing his arms and tapping his lips. “Well, I could add sex after Drag Race , but only if you really want to, because I’ll probably be pretty tired by then?”
Oh. Her eyes widened as Tom began to grin at her in a proprietary way. “That, um. I just meant that sounded like a lot.”
“Ouch,” said Tom, smiling wider, because she’d neatly fallen for his line. “Can we make out on the couch after Drag Race , at least?”
Probably. She let a tentative smile round out her cheeks. She actually thought that out of everything Tom was doing for her today, she’d appreciate making out on the couch after trashy TV the most.
“If you play your cards right,” she said, taking another step up the stairs before Tom held out a hand to stop her.
“Babe, the second floor is full of dust and bees and who knows what else today. Nothing good for Rosies. I swear everything is okay. Really. Everything is fine. Why don’t you just hang out at the cottage this morning?” he said.
A blonde woman in Crocs and tattered jeans appeared at the top of the landing with her two palms cupped together. “I found the queen,” she announced to Tom in a whispery voice and began to spread her fingers. Tom shot Rose a look of mild panic.
“I’ll be outside if you decide you need anything,” Rose said, and she left.
···
Rose was now at loose ends. She was probably allergic to the bees, and for all she knew, one mistake would send her to the ER looking like a blistered cherry pepper. So she couldn’t stay in the inn. Tom seemed to have made huge progress in task management from the days when she’d had to hand him his homework assignments one by one, so he didn’t need her help with the demolition. And even from Singapore, Caroline had neatly picked up the weekly reports that were the most time-consuming part of Rose’s job. These were all good things.
Still, Rose was feeling a little adrift as she backed all the way down the stairs and went through the kitchen to the back patio.
When she’d dreaded taking over this renovation, she’d dreaded doing it alone . She didn’t mind doing it for her family. She loved them. She’d just wanted to do it with someone.
If all she’d done yesterday was choose the wallpaper in one room, she’d gotten to do it with Tom. She smiled as she remembered the shopkeeper’s face at Tom’s wildly inappropriate jokes. She’d expected to want to strangle him on this trip. And sometimes she did. But at other times…she thought she was looking forward to kissing him again.
Bolstered by this emotion, she managed to text the family group chat again, hoping to gin up some interest in the renovations. Even if they hadn’t displayed any interest yet , she felt like it was on her to at least keep trying.
Rose: I’m going to rake up the bocce ball courts today! Remember the year we did a tournament?
She squinted expectantly at the screen. It took a few long minutes before anyone replied at all. Only her brother and Seth: Lol. Too bad my kids only play Minecraft! and How’s the drainage? The realtor thinks the back five acres could sell as a separate parcel , respectively.
Rose couldn’t bring herself to reply to either of them. She closed her eyes and tamped down her rising sense of disappointment as she shoved her phone back into the front pocket of her jeans. She didn’t know what she’d expected. It was probably hard to imagine playing bocce ball when it had snowed the previous day.
She trudged through decomposing leaves toward the deck but stopped when she noticed movement in the scrubby woods out behind the property.
“Hello?” she called. In response, she heard a distant gobble. “Oh crap.” She immediately cast around for a loose branch or something to fend off the wild turkeys if they attacked. She’d just picked up a decent-sized rock when she heard someone—a human person—call her name from deeper in the brush.
“Um, yes?” she replied, finally seeing a set of giant footprints in the slushy snow. She could guess who they belonged to. “Boyd? Boyd Kellagher? What are you doing back there?”
It took her another moment to spot him in the underbrush. Her brain hadn’t immediately registered his shape as another human, since he was squatting back on his heels, and also, he was so big . She hadn’t appreciated it while she was dangling like a drowned possum from his grip, but his thighs were like telephone poles and his hands were like construction cranes. Big! her mind exclaimed, like it automatically said Horses! when she saw horses or Oh no! when she saw a rollover accident.
“I’m considering the motivations of the turkey,” Boyd replied in the tone of someone who was used to having his every utterance considered as though it made a great deal of sense.
“The big one who keeps tearing things up on the porch?” Rose asked, picking her way over to the movie star.
“Yes,” Boyd said. He lifted an arm and pointed back into the trees, where a large, round shape paced and flapped its wings with agitation. “The tom. Not Tom, capital T . The tom turkey. He’s very distressed. There was an incident of violence earlier. Tom, capital T , was pecked.”
Up close, Rose could see why Tom had been cast opposite Boyd. The two of them looked similar enough that her mind kept moving from feature to feature, marking the commonalities. It wasn’t just the muscles. They both had strong noses and full mouths. The long, shaggy haircut they were both currently sporting softened the severity of Boyd’s features and hid Tom’s big ears and fuller cheeks. Maybe they went to the same barber.
Boyd turned his head to look up at her with soulful brown eyes. “Tom yelled at both of us,” he said with enormous, dignified sorrow, like a sad granite outcropping.
It took Rose a moment to work out that Boyd meant himself and the turkey, not himself and Rose.
“Oh,” she said, feeling vaguely as though she ought to apologize on Tom’s behalf, even though she’d been rightly furious the day before at being manhandled and photographed against her will. “It’s been…a weird couple of days. Tom’s not usually a yeller.” Though that had been a different relationship and a long time ago.
She expected that thought to hurt, especially while looking right at the big handsome man who’d slept with Tom at least once, a lot more recently than she had. She’d expected to feel jealous if she ever talked to Boyd about Tom. Instead, she had only a big rush of fellowship and sympathy. Didn’t she know better than anyone else in the world what it felt like to be in a fight with Tom? It sucked. You tried to do something for Tom and it blew up in your face? Do I ever have a story for you, buddy.
“The tom turkey is concerned that we pose a threat to his hens,” Boyd said, swinging his gaze back to the trees. “I’m going to offer him some food.” He stuck his hand in his windbreaker pocket and brought out a wrapped energy bar.
“Maybe we shouldn’t feed him?” Rose said. “Won’t that just encourage him to, um, stick around?”
“He lives here,” Boyd pointed out, blinking at her in soft confusion before sighing and putting the energy bar away. “Tom told me to deal with the turkey,” he said mournfully. “But I don’t know what else to try. I don’t want to hurt him.”
It would have taken a heart of stone not to be touched by a giant man devoted to nonviolence. “Of course you don’t have to hurt the turkey,” Rose exclaimed, even though she’d roasted many of the turkey’s distant relatives over the years and would shed no tears for him if he met the same fate. “I’m sure that’s not what Tom meant.” She was sure that was exactly what Tom had meant.
Boyd pursed his lips, distressed. He rubbed his mouth with one bear paw–sized hand. “He saved my life, you know.”
“I know,” Rose said. “He can be kind of amazing sometimes. Makes the other stuff hit harder though.”
“I’m sorry about the pool yesterday,” Boyd said. “I was just trying to help.”
“I know,” Rose said again, because now she felt she did.
“And we’re really not together. I’m sorry you thought that,” Boyd added. His shoulders sagged. “I’m not even sure he likes me.”
Rose wasn’t sure how to be sorry about that, though she felt like she’d be a better person if she did.
“Do you have anything that needs to be done?” Boyd asked hopefully. “Tom told me to stay outside. When he was yelling. Even though anyone could see the drywall was rotten and needed to come out and I was just saving him time by pulling it out.”
“I’m not sure,” Rose said. “Tom took my binder of construction plans.”
“There’s a plan?” Boyd asked, perking up.
“It didn’t get that far. It was more of a vision.”
Boyd looked greatly impressed. “Of course,” he rumbled. “Of course you have one. Tell me about your vision.”
Rose hesitated. The man’s face was nothing but sincere, but how could she say she wanted the inn to be charming and beautiful, the kind of place where she’d bring her husband and kids and family, without getting deep into how, actually, she didn’t have a husband or kids, and her family was all AWOL too?
“So, one of the things I meant to do was work on the basement pub,” she told him instead. “The inn had a beer and wine license, but it got so little traffic that it was losing money on the permit fees. I’m not sure what’s a better use for the space though.”
Boyd nodded vigorously. “You are still in the inspiration phase.”
“I…guess I am, yes.”
“We need to nurture your inspiration,” Boyd declared. “Are there other pubs on the island? Vineyards? Wine bars?”
Rose blinked. “I’m sure there are. Yeah.” Nobody actually grew grapes on the Vineyard, but people liked local wine anyway.
“We should visit them. And take notes. And form a complete idea of the character of the pub,” Boyd declared. He stood up, and Rose had to take a tiny step back to absorb his full height.
Big! Big like a desert rock formation! Big like a marine mammal!
Rose swallowed and tried to get herself together. “I don’t know if we should.” She gnawed on the inside of her cheek, because it would be pretty weird to go off for the day with Boyd, regardless of whether he was in love with her ex-husband or just following him around out of some misguided idea of life-debt, the Chewbacca to Tom’s Han Solo.
Wait, Boyd Kellagher wanted to go day-drinking with her. If there was ever a time to stop thinking and go with it, it was now.
“This sure sounds like a legitimate way to plan a basement renovation,” she decided. “But it might take a little while to find a taxi willing to take us anywhere.”
“I can drive,” Boyd offered. Then he frowned. “No, I can’t. Tom said I was under no circumstances to drive you anywhere.” His big gloomy face creased in consternation. “Tom doesn’t think I’m a very safe driver.”
Rose caught herself before she could commiserate on that too. Yeah, almost getting him drowned just once would probably have Tom holding it against Boyd forever.
And then she had an idea. She knew two people with a car and not enough to do who would probably look very impressed if Rose came out with Boyd and a drinking agenda. Tom would probably not approve, but it sounded like he would be very busy with renovations today.
Her brother texted her again.
Davey: Hey think I left a pair of snow boots in the bunk room could you bring them with you next time you’re in Boston?
Rose wrinkled her nose at her phone. Why were her ex and his ex more invested in the success of this project than her own family? Well, she wasn’t going to sulk around feeling abandoned. She was going to get blitzed with a movie star and his groupies.
“Boyd, I’d love to introduce you to a couple of your fans,” Rose said. “They seem really good at research and inspiration.”